


coming up for air

by escapismandsharpobjects



Category: Young Wallander (TV)
Genre: F/M, FebuWhump2021, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Torture, Waterboarding, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-22
Updated: 2021-02-22
Packaged: 2021-03-19 05:20:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29621202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/escapismandsharpobjects/pseuds/escapismandsharpobjects
Summary: febuwhump day 21: tortureKurt wakes up with no idea where he is, and no memory of how he might have gotten there. It’s dark, and his arms and legs are tied up, holding him tightly to some kind of board placed at a rather steep angle, so he’s nearly standing, but not quite. He tries and fails to move his hands.He’s starting to panic a little, pulling harder and harder at the thick ropes around his wrists and ankles, feeling them dig into his skin, eventually feeling them draw blood. He stops then, and resigns himself to waiting for someone to show up.
Relationships: Kurt Wallander & Frida Rask, Kurt Wallander & Jasmine, Kurt Wallander & Reza Al-Rahman, Reza Al-Rahman/Jasmine
Comments: 4
Kudos: 5





	coming up for air

**Author's Note:**

> hi!!! i was really excited to write some waterboarding and i had a good time with it :) i hope you like this fic!

Kurt wakes up with no idea where he is, and no memory of how he might have gotten there. It’s dark, and his arms and legs are tied up, holding him tightly to some kind of board placed at a rather steep angle, so he’s nearly standing, but not quite. He tries and fails to move his hands. 

He’s starting to panic a little, pulling harder and harder at the thick ropes around his wrists and ankles, feeling them dig into his skin, eventually feeling them draw blood. He stops then, and resigns himself to waiting for someone to show up. 

He doesn’t have to wait long. Within a few moments, he hears a door creak open behind him, letting in a momentary streak of light until it slams closed again with a bang. Footsteps approach him, and he twists frantically to get a look at who they might belong to. 

He hears the footsteps come to a halt, somewhere in front of him, and then the person they belong to barks an order of, “lights!”

There’s a whir and a clank, and then large fluorescent lights illuminate the room. Kurt looks around. A warehouse of some kind, he decides, long and empty with few windows and fewer doors. 

The man standing in front of him isn’t familiar at all. Kurt stares hard at him, trying to put his face to memory. “Who are you?” he asks, though he’s pretty sure he’s not going to get an answer.

_ “I’ll _ be asking the questions, Mr. Wallander,” the man says, and Kurt swallows hard at the use of his name. This guy knows who he is. That doesn’t seem good. 

“Ah, so you’ve noticed I know you,” the man says, in response. “Good. Well, Mr. Wallander,  _ Kurt,  _ my name is Jacobsen. And you have some information that can help me.”

“What?”

“You’re a police officer, Kurt. Surely you’re familiar with the process of an interrogation?”

“Yes.”

“That's what this is going to be. I’ll ask you a question, and you’ll answer it. Simple as that.”   
Something tells Kurt it’s  _ not  _ going to be that simple. “And if I don’t know the answer?”

“You’ll know the answer.”

“If I don’t want to tell you, then?”

Quick as anything, the man steps forward and punches Kurt in the stomach, hard. His breath rushes out of his lungs and he gasps in pain, coughing. 

“Or something like that will happen.”

That doesn’t sound much like an interrogation, Kurt thinks. 

It’s not an interrogation. It’s torture. No answer he provides Jacobsen with is good enough, no matter how true it may be. If it’s a lie, Jacobsen says he’s lying. If it’s the truth, he says he’s lying.  _ Nothing  _ is good enough. 

The punches start to blur into each other, wrapping his entire body in a haze of aching pain. A kick to the shin for lying. A punch to the stomach for something that had almost been the truth. A slap in the face for something completely true. 

“This is getting nowhere,” Jacobsen growls, and Kurt has to agree with him. He spits out a mouthful of blood and replies, “maybe you should just let me go, then?”

That remark earns him a punch to the side of his face that makes his ears ring. “I’m not finished with you yet, Wallander,” Jacobsen says. “I think I  _ am  _ done questioning you though. Clearly we are not getting anything accomplished.”

Kurt doesn’t like the implications of this. “Wait!” he says, as Jacobsen pulls back for another punch. “Wait. I’ll tell you the truth. Anything you want to know.”

“Really?” 

“Rea-”

He’s cut off by a punch to his chest that makes him feel like he can’t breathe. He gasps for air, spots swimming in his field of vision. 

“I don’t care about what you have to say anymore, Kurt. Now, I just want to hurt you.”

_ Haven’t you done enough of that already? _ Kurt wonders, blinking hard to get his eyes to focus again.  _ Can’t you just be done with it? _

Clearly not. Although Jacobsen  _ does  _ stop punching him, which is nice. And then it’s not, and Kurt wishes desperately for the punches to come back.

“Water,” Jacobsen calls, and Kurt sees someone run up to him with a bucket. He thinks for a moment maybe they are going to give him something to drink, give him a little break, but instead Jacobsen reaches into his coat and produces a handkerchief, unfolding it. He pushes the piece of wood that Kurt is laying on until it’s parallel to the ground. 

Jacobsen places the fabric over Kurt’s face, and Kurt twists his head frantically to try and get it off, his mind quickly spiraling into a panic. He hears the water slosh in the bucket, and then it’s being poured on him, onto the cloth on his face, and he can’t breathe, and he’s choking on water and his lungs are burning and he  _ can’t breathe, _ except he has no choice  _ but  _ to breathe eventually, and then he feels the water pour down his throat, wants to choke on it but can’t, feels it burn its way through him. He thrashes against the ropes with more strength than before, feels them dig harder still into his wrists.  _ Ask me something, ask me anything,  _ he thinks.  _ Anything at all and I’ll tell you the answer. _ But Jacobsen doesn’t ask. He is going to die. 

And then he is not. The handkerchief is removed, and he takes in a breath of air, choking on some residual water but not caring in the slightest. He doesn’t think he will ever be able to get enough air into his lungs again. 

“Do you wish you had answered my questions better now?” 

He nods against the rough wood of the board.  _ Give me another chance, I’ll answer them better, just don’t do that to me again. _

“Well, too bad, Kurt. I’m not a fan of second chances.”

The handkerchief comes back, and Kurt tries again to get away from it, knowing it’s impossible but fighting anyway. “Stop,” he chokes out, “I’ll tell you anything.”

“That’s the problem. You’ll tell me  _ anything. _ Regardless of truth, of importance...no, I don’t want you to tell me anything else.”

The handkerchief is back on his face, still wet, and he thinks it would be quite nice if the thing just suffocated him right now. 

Of course, he can’t be so lucky. The whole process is repeated again, the burning in his nose, throat, and lungs even more intense the second time around.  _ I’m going to die, _ he thinks.  _ This time I am going to die. _ It’s terrifying, but he can do nothing against it. He chokes and chokes and then the water goes away again, and he chokes on the air, too, breathing it in wildly as though it’s the best thing in the world (he’s never been so thankful for air before). 

His throat hurts too much to speak, now, and all he can do is struggle against the ropes as the handkerchief comes back a third time. He tries to convince himself this time that he will be fine. He  _ knows  _ now that Jacobsen isn’t trying to kill him. But all his body knows is that it feels like it’s drowning, and it reacts accordingly. He just wants it to stop…

\--

He’s not quite all there, so it takes a moment for him to register the sound of more voices in the room, many more voices, and then hurried footsteps. The water goes away again, but the cloth remains on his face, sliding slowly down until he can see the scene in front of him. 

Police officers. Several of them, all over the warehouse, wrestling people - including Jacobsen - into cuffs. 

Someone steps in front of him, and speaks. It takes a moment for him to recognize it as Rask. 

“Are you okay?”

He blinks up at her, for the first time aware of how much he is shaking, how cold he is, how truly  _ terrified  _ he is. He shakes his head, hair catching against the wood of the board. 

Rask is silent. She unties the rope from his ankles, then his wrists, and guides him off of the board, where he promptly slumps to the floor, coughing up some of the water that he’d swallowed. 

“That bastard waterboarded you,” she says, and it’s not a question. She crouches next to him and puts a hand between his shoulder blades. 

Kurt tries to respond, tries to tell her what Jacobsen had said, but he just coughs instead, which turns into gasping breaths, which turn into sobs. 

Rask grabs him and hauls him up into a sitting position, and then to his feet, whereupon he promptly turns and grabs onto her, burying his face in her shoulder, both in an instinctual move for comfort and so that he doesn’t collapse back to the ground, his legs currently being far too weak to support his weight. 

If Rask minds this, she doesn’t say, just holds onto Kurt, keeping him upright and letting him cling to her like he might just disappear if he lets go. 

“Shit, Kurt, you’re freezing,” she says to him, and he feels a warm hand touch the back of his freezing neck. “Let’s go get you warmed up, yeah?”

He nods against her shoulder. Being warm sounds like the second-best thing in the world to him right now, coming in behind air, which he thinks is going to be the best thing in the world to him forever. 

Rask leads him outside, for all intents and purposes carrying him, until they reach an ambulance. She guides him down onto the back of it, then steps away with a kind of sad smile. Kurt returns it as a paramedic begins looking him over. She finishes her task fairly quickly, telling him things he doesn’t really pay attention to but which boil down to: he doesn’t need the hospital. That’s all he really needs to know, he decides, and lets himself half-fall asleep under the warm blanket she gives him. 

“Kurt!”

His eyes fly open and he looks around, irrationally afraid, until he sees Reza approaching. 

“Hey,” he manages to say, the word feeling like sandpaper on his throat. Reza sits down next to him, wrapping a warm arm around his shoulders. 

“Don’t talk,” he says. “That’ll just make it worse.”

Kurt nods, leaning into Reza. 

“It felt good to put that motherfucker in cuffs,” Reza says, after a beat. “I just finished with him now. They’re taking him back to the station.”

Kurt nods again.  _ That’s good,  _ he thinks, weirdly glad that it was Reza who’d arrested his torturer. 

“Anyway, I hear they’re not taking you to the hospital.”

Kurt gives him a thumbs up. He imagines they’re both glad about that. 

“But there’s no way in hell you’re going home. You’re coming to my place, at least for the night.”

Kurt nods. He imagines the Al-Rahmans’ house, the comfortable couch, the smell of dinner cooking, Shaba begging to play a game together… He imagines being truly warm and dry and safe. It sounds  _ fantastic.  _

Reza drives them home, talking to Kurt about nothing in particular, treating it like a perfectly normal conversation, despite the fact that Kurt’s only answers come in gestures. They arrive shortly after nine pm, and Kurt is amazed by the early hour - he’d never known what time it was, or how much time he’d spent, in the warehouse, but it feels like it should be the middle of the night. 

The second that they’re through the front door (Kurt leaning heavily on Reza, legs still unwilling to support his weight), Kurt feels his body relax, feels the racing panic that had lingered in his mind fade away. He’s  _ safe.  _

Reza guides him down the hall to his and Jasmine’s bedroom, letting Kurt sit on the bed even though he must be getting it wet. He hands Kurt a stack of dry clothes and directs him to the bathroom. “I’m gonna go talk to Jas,” he calls, as Kurt begins the process of changing. “We’ll be in the living room when you’re done.”

A few minutes later, Kurt is mostly dried off, dressed in a thick sweatshirt and a pair of flannel pajama pants. He still feels a bit cold, a bit wet, though he’s done his best to get himself warm and dry. He passes a towel over his hair again, which is still stubbornly dripping down the back of his neck. 

Eventually, he decides this is as good as it’s going to get, and he leaves the bathroom, slowly, hand on the wall for support.

Kurt stumbles into the living room, fairly collapsing onto the couch, absolutely exhausted. Almost immediately, someone drapes a blanket over him, and then both Reza and Jasmine are sitting next to him, on either side, which makes him feel both warmer and safer. 

“Are you hungry?” Jasmine asks, from his right. He shakes his head. 

“You want anything to drink? Hot tea, maybe?” Reza suggests, from his left. Kurt shakes his head a bit more vehemently. He really doesn’t like the idea of anything at all in his mouth, especially nothing liquid. While he imagines it might soothe the aching in his throat, the idea of drinking something takes him back to swallowing that water, brings the taste of it to his tongue, and he can’t stand it. 

“Do you want to watch TV, then?” Reza suggests. “Shaba’s sleeping, but we can keep it quiet.”

_ That sounds nice,  _ Kurt decides, nodding his assent. It sounds  _ normal.  _

Reza turns the TV to a cheesy old movie that’s playing, and he and Jasmine each wrap an arm around Kurt’s shoulders, a silent reminder that they are there and not going anywhere. 

If either of them notices the tears silently tracking down his face, they’re kind enough not to mention it.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks so much for reading!!!!! hope you enjoyed, please tell me what you think!


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